CHART OF THE DAY: The Rise of the Smart Speaker

There is pretty good evidence that the rate of mainstream adoption of new technologies is significantly more rapid than it has been in the past. It took something like 60 or 70 years for the home-based, land line telephone to achieve over 90% penetration in US homes once the technology became generally available.

Fast forward to more recent technology innovations like the personal computer or the mobile phone and time for widespread adoption has diminished to just a couple of decades (if not less for modern tools and solutions like social media/networking apps).

New tech, when it 'hits', hits much faster than ever before and its adoption accelerates across mainstream users much faster as well. Today's Chart(s) of the Day, courtesy of some research done by Voicebot.ai show just how prevalent the smart speaker, a technology almost no one had in their homes even two years ago, have become.

Chart 1 - Smart Speaker Market Penetration - US

About 20% of US adults are in homes that have one of these smart speakers enabled. It may not sound like much, but think about it - how many times had you seen one of these say as recently as 2016?

Chart 2 - Smart Speaker Market Share - US

No surprise, to me at least, that Amazon has the dominant position in the US in terms of smart speakers. They beat their competitors to this market, and their platform, Alexa, has become pretty synonymous with the entire voice assistant technology. If I were a company looking to develop solutions for voice, I would start with Alexa for sure.

Once people, in their 'real lives' begin to adopt a technology solution in large numbers, they begin to seek, demand, and expect these same kinds of technologies will be available and tailored to their workplace needs as well. The data shows that smart speakers like the Echo and the Google Home device are gaining mainstream adoption really, really quickly.

If your organization has not yet started to think about how to deploy services, information, and access to organizational information via these smart speakers and their platforms like Alexa I wouldn't say you are late, but you are getting close to being late.

Better to be in front of a freight train rolling down the line than it is to get run over by it.

Last note - stay tuned for an exciting announcement in this space from your pals at the HR Happy Hour Show.

PODCAST: #HRHappyHour 312: HR Tech Startup Spotlight: Disco

HR Happy Hour 312 - HR Tech Startup Spotlight: Disco

Host: Steve Boese

Guests: Justin Vandehey, Veronica Belmont from Disco

Listen HERE

This week on the HR Happy Hour Show, Steve kicks off a new series, the HR Tech Startup Spotlight with Justin Vandehey and Veronica Belmont from Disco, an AI-based engagement and recognition platform based team collaboration tools like Slack and MS Teams,

On the show, Justin and Veronica shared the story of Disco, how the idea to create a new kind of employee engagement and recognition based on collaboration tools that employees were already using to get work done came to be, and how making recognition easy, real-time, in context of normal workflows, and tied back to company values is proving to be so powerful.

Disco has been developed in a way where it can be enabled and adopted inside organizations so easily and in a grassroots kind of manner that it served to democratize HR tech, in a way that legacy platforms for recognition and feedback can't really match, which is really novel and cool.

Additionally, Justin and Veronica shared the benefits adopting organizations are seeing from Disco, how HR leaders can leverage the solution in their organizations, the benefits of an integrated recognition solution, and how some customers are driving improvements in engagement and business outcomes like NPS and customer satisfaction from leveraging increased and measurable recognition programs,

We also learned a new term 'Fart App', Steve previewed next week's HR Happy Hour Oscars Show, and that Veronica has a highly coveted 'first name only' Twitter handle.

You can listen to the show on the show page HERE, or by using the widget player below:

This was a fun show, thanks to Justin and Veronica for joining us.

Learn more about Disco at http://justdisco.com.

Thanks as always to HR Happy Hour Show sponsor Virgin Pulse, learn more at - www.virginpulse.com

And subscribe to the HR Happy Hour Show wherever you get your podcasts.

HRE Column: Succeeding with HR Tech - Part 1

Once again, I offer my semi-frequent reminder and pointer for blog readers that I also write a monthly column at Human Resource Executive Online called Inside HR Tech that can be found here.

This month, I talk a little about the one of the major themes that we will be focusing on for the next HR Technology Conference - the nature of 'success' with your HR technology initiatives, and review some of the key issues, themes, and considerations for HR Tech projects and vendor relationships that are essential, and will be covered in more detail at the Conference this year.

In the piece, I take a look at some of the issues and considerations that HR leaders should keep in mind as they evaluate potential as well as current HR tech providers in order to have the best chance of making the 'right' HR tech decisions, and ultimately, succeeding with HR tech. This month's column talks about culture alignment, a focus on customer success, measurement and goals and more. Next month, we will take a look at 'success' from the internal point of view, and look at some of the most important organizational factors and decisions that set up your team for success.

Here's an excerpt from this month's piece in HRE Online:

Anyone who has had the good fortune to participate in the full cycle of an HR technology-implementation project knows well that such efforts usually consist of numerous milestones, dozens—if not hundreds—of tasks and components, scores of internal and external resources, significant investments of funds and time and myriad opportunities for sub-optimal outcomes or outright failure.

Choose the “wrong” solution and your HR tech project could flounder. Forget to ensure some critical capabilities will be supported in the new system in time and the “go-live” date could be compromised. Fail to procure the right experts to serve on the project team and progress could languish. Lose control of the project’s scope and end up with delays and cost overruns. And there are a hundred other reasons why well-intentioned HR technology projects fail to deliver.

With apologies to Tolstoy for paraphrasing his famous line about families, I would argue that successful HR tech projects are all alike; unsuccessful HR tech projects fail in their own way. While understanding why some projects succeed and others fail is important for any organization, it’s even more vital to prepare for and execute HR technology strategies in a manner that maximizes the chance for success.

As co-chair of the HR Technology^® Conference and Expo, I am focusing on developing considerable content around the “Success with HR Technology” theme. With that in mind, I thought it would be helpful to examine the nature of customer success and highlight some considerations that HR and HRIT leaders should keep in mind as they continue with workplace technology planning, purchasing, implementation and post-implementation activities in 2018.

Creating a culture of customer success

During some recent research, I was encouraged to find that the concept of customer success has gained strength in recent years as an important measure and barometer for HR and enterprise technology providers.

While each provider may have its own way of defining customer success, the important thing is that more of them are intentionally making the concept of their customers’ success a fundamental yardstick of self-measurement. Prior to selecting any new HR technology provider, HR leaders will not only want to ensure that customer success is one of the important (if not the most important) ways they self-examine, but you will also want to see demonstrable proof of their customer commitment.

Read the rest at HR Executive online...

If you liked the piece you can sign up over at HRE to get the Inside HR Tech Column emailed to you each month. There is no cost to subscribe, in fact, I may even come over and shovel your driveway, take your dog for a walk, or scrape the ice off of your car.

Have a great day!

Creating a more human relationship with technology

I have been thinking and writing about the early and potential future impact of voice-enabled digital assistant technologies (like Amazon's Alexa, Google Home, and others), pretty often in 2018, so much so that I had pretty much decided to lay off the topic for a bit, as it was getting kind of repetitive.

But as keeps happening, over the weekend I read a really interesting article from the Think With Google team sharing some survey results on how people are using and perhaps more interestingly, feeling about their interactions, usage, and relationship with these digital assistants and platforms. There are two really interesting data points from the survey I wanted to share, as they both reveal something interesting and important as HR tech providers and HR practitioners and end users consider the development and application of voice enabled/driven assistants in workplace tech.

One: People who own voice activated technologies like the Echo and the Google Home are quickly incorporating them into their daily lives and routines:

 

Why that matters: Driving user adoption of workplace technologies has always been a challenge for technology developers and implementation teams. But these voice activated digital assistants are showing that new tech that is easy to access, provides value quickly and clearly, and provides a kind of fun and engaging experience while also providing value, will be readily adopted by most people.

Two - The nature of the voice interface and activation is making the relationship between users and technology much more personal, even human. 

 

Why that matters -  It seems like the nature of how these digital assistants are created, how we interact with them, (more or less conversationally), how they have names (Alexa, Siri), and how they even have some level of personality (ask Alexa to tell you a joke, or tell her 'I'm sorry' sometime), and the technology seems to become more a part of our overall way of experiencing the world, and not a separate thing or tool we have to learn how to use. The technology and capability continues to blend into the world and into the other kinds of tools and tech we use all the time - cars, thermostats, appliances, and computers. In the workplace, we need to start to think about making our HR and workplace tools and technologies ones that are just 'there' - embedded in other workplace systems, active in workplace settings like conference rooms, and accessible at all times with a simple voice command.

I continue to find the entire voice activated / digital assistant space incredibly interesting. Hope you do as well. 

The next project to work on is getting an HR Happy Hour Podcast skill/update on Alexa!

The market for enterprise tech is huge - and growing

The market research company Gartner recently released their projections for Enterprise IT spending (think how much and for what types of technology upon which companies and organizations will spend their IT budgets), and what the Gartner data suggests is really telling and interesting for the HR and HR Technology space. Here's the data from the Gartner press release, then some comments from me after the chart:

A few notes and observations from this data, and one thing to think about if you are an HR leader and a consumer/shopper for new HR technology in 2018:

1. The enterprise IT market is massive - fast approaching $4 trillion (yes, that is with a T) in the US in the coming years. This is the manifestation of the old mantra the 'every company is a technology company'. No matter what your are business for, chances are in 2018 or 2019, you will be investing in more and better technology across the board in order to increase efficiency, expand market share, better serve customers, innovate on new products and services, and improve and enhance your human capital. Said differently, if your organization has not/will not be investing in technology you certainly risk falling behind competitors who are making those investments.

2. The enterprise shift to cloud-based, SaaS solutions is by and large complete. Look at the growth rate for the Data Center Systems category in the Gartner data. Organizational investment in their own data centers is expected to be about flat in 2018, and to decline in 2019. Most organizations, even larger, global ones, simply do not want to be in the business of building and maintaining their own data centers. Best to leave that to the Amazons, Googles, Microsofts, and Oracles of the world. From an HR tech perspective, if you are an HR leader at an organization who still utilizes on-premise HR solutions, 2018 could be the year that your CIO finally has a discussion with you about migrating off of your own data centers and into an HR tech provider's cloud.

3. And take a look at the growth rate Gartner estimates for Enterprise Software - the category that includes HCM solutions. They estimate 9.5% growth in spend for enterprise tech in 2018 and over 8% in 2019 - making this category the fastest growing by a large margin in all of enterprise IT. This tells us a couple of things. One, like I mentioned above, Enterprise Software is the IT category that offers the best opportunity to help drive competitive advantage for the organization. Whether it is tech that improves the supply chain performance, provides data to better market and target customers, or enables the organization to hire, develop, and retain the best talent - this is how/where technology spend can make a real difference in business performance.

And two, a growing and robust market for enterprise tech, (and HR Tech), is good news for you, the customer. You should see more and better solutions come to market, increased innovation from your current and established HR tech providers, and improved opportunities to implement HR and HCM tools to enhance your overall employee and candidate experience. The next few years appear to be a great time for HR organizations who are ready and willing to take advantage of this vibrant market for HR technology.

Happy Monday - have a great week!